Resto Shaman WoL Analysis (Ask and you may receive)

Restoration Shamans haven't been having the best of tiers so far. Our numbers are low and our niche somewhat questioned. Furthermore the disparity between 25man and 10man has never been as poignant as it is nowadays. While there is tons of information in http://elitistjerks....ng_heals_5_2_a/, it can be hard sometimes to identify the reason between high and low parses. Raid composition, encounter, correct timing and plenty more reasons will lead to a variety of throughput. This thread is created in the hopes of shading some light to that direction and identifying quickly the disparities. Most of the rules will still be on effect however Forum rule #7 ("Do not beg for hand-holding.") is not in effect in this thread. Additionally to the aforementioned, below you can view the guidelines you can follow for posting in this thread :

This thread is no exception to the rest of the Forum Rules. Whining, rudeness, ingratitude, and poor grammar will be dealt with harshly.

Your post must contain a link to a public World of Logs parse. Don't post damage meter screenshots.

The parse must be from a 10 or 25 man raid. 5-mans and target dummies are not welcome.

You must be max level (90). We're not about to look over a log from a level 70 Sunwell run.

Your character needs to be fully gemmed and enchanted. There is no point complaining about poor regen when you are missing half of it due to bad gemming.

Your profile MUST work. If you tend to change specs/log out in PVP gear please create a character profile through Wowhead or a similar site. If you have two similar specs, indicate which one you were using in the parse.

You must give a few sentences regarding what you think your problem is. Are you moving a lot due to fight mechanics? Do you perform some vital secondary role that may impact your rotation? (kiting, interrupting, etc). What is your healing assignment? We can't help you if you don't help us.

I have been tweaking and reforging and done everything in my power trying to improve my healing output, yet after looking at logs im still only around 60 k hps, this is really starting to anoy me, i should be around 70 - 80 k with my gear, I have maximised my uptime of healing stream and and combined unleash elements and healing rain but still i feel like im falling behind. if any have any suggestions to tweaks etc please let me know see my char here

25man and 10man shamans have different reforging and spell priorities. Whereas you will find many 25man resto shamans reforging completely to spirit , essentially transforming themselves to mana batteries for the rest of the healers in the raid, this is not the best throughput solution for our class. When you find yourself to the point where your spirit can sustain 100% HR and CH uptime while you are layering your cds this is the soft spirit breakpoint you need to strive for, unless your raid leader asks you to specifically do otherwise. If you find yourself in need of more mana during the fight you should consider replacing your glyph of healing wave with glyph of Totemic recall. There is an interesting discussion at http://elitistjerks....p6/#post2228411 pointing out the usefulness of this glyph and its clear superiority to gaining mana back so start trying to work into recalling your HST into your rotation.

When it comes to your haste you can maintain your 8882 haste cap however you need to lower your mastery and allocate the rest of the points to crit. I would try and raid with 5676 haste breakpoint too while allocating the rest to crit and see with your raid setup what would result to higher numbers. The essence of this whole reforging is that you need to have 100% HR uptime while your are filling in with CH. Forget using any single target spell unless you have a specific assignment or someone is in desperate need of HS. I know it doesn't sound as a sane advice however for a 25man shaman the best way to bring your throughput up is by spamming HR and CH. Single target spells are mostly useful to a 10man shaman ( and whenever you absolutely can't cast CH) and unfortunately the only reason for this lies in the fact that a 10man shaman can't benefit from his HR and CH as much as a 25man does. When you Ascend your best rotation is still HS. Riptide mainly to ensure that your CH is always buffed or when your raid is spread. Try to layer your CDâ€™s as best as possible while maintaining as close to 100% uptime on your Earth shield and HST. When it comes to HTT and Ascendance it's needless to say that the less overhealing they have the better it will reflect to your throughput. HTT specifically should never surpass 5% overheals. If it does then there is either nothing to heal, or your CD assignment is relatively poor and/or combined with another classes strong CD.

Hi everybody, I was going as Resto-Shammy with my guild as the 3rd healer in some 10man (N) bosses (Ji-kun, Durumu, Primordius, Dark Animus, Iron Qon) and supporting with some healing to many different combinations of healers (monk/r-shammy, druid/pally, pally/r-shammy) and I always lag behind in HpS and effective healing. It seems I'm not using the resto spec to its full potential and need many things to improve or change, would you mind to give me some piece of advice if I share with you some logs and character profiles?Here's my shammy:Aymara @ Quel'Thalas - Community - World of Warcraft

The resto shammy wasn't in healing spec and gear and i cant find him online to ask him to logout in healer gear and spec (sorry about that :S).

I feel pathetic cause i cant even beat a prot pally for this fight, but he was solo tanking Durumu, perhaps with outstanding levels of vengeance his sacred shield heals a lot and has a null overhealing, but it's clear that I need to learn how to use my resto. What flaws can you see from my logs?

Some useful data, my average latency is 240ms and i think that i'm not using HST on CD or whenever is needed, i have too much mastery and low haste cause i feel my direct healing spells reach the targets too late and become mostly overhealing.

I am so glad I found this on EJ today. I don't know many raiding Shaman Healers in game and I'm really having a problem finding ways to improve my 10 man healing performance. So here is my problem statement:

I've been healing for two expansions now, but I'm a very long time player overall. I have gone from a typical mastery build to crit and use Int food and Flasks during raids. In ToT raids, due to the spread of the players during most fights, my heals are not as optimized as they could be. How can I do a better job at healing...is it gear, technique, spell usage, or something else?

1. I drop HST every CD2. I unleash elements + Healing rain every CD of UE (so I try to never HR without a UE before hand)3. I dont glyph RT, but I try to use it every CD, then Chain Heal that RT target4. I prefer healing wave, but will Greater HW if I need more (try to do afer a RT for the haste)5. I use weakauras and have triggers for important events, like for ES status, HST, HTT, Ascendency, etc

If i can provide any more data to you, please ask. thank you very much.

I cant even beat a prot pally for this fight, but he was solo tanking Durumu, perhaps with outstanding levels of vengeance his sacred shield heals a lot and has a null overhealing, but it's clear that I need to learn how to use my resto. What flaws can you see from my logs?

Some useful data, my average latency is 240ms and i think that i'm not using HST on CD or whenever is needed, I have too much mastery and low haste cause i feel my direct healing spells reach the targets too late and become mostly overhealing.

Thanks in advance,

Almagest

You logged out on your Ele spec so I cannot comment on your armory. Notify me when you do via pm and I will update this post with new information.

There are a few tips that will always help such as keep up with EarthShield as close to 100% uptime as possible, always use CH on a target with Riptide ( preferably the tank that has also Earthshield on him), use HST on CD, time your CD's as perfectly as possible for less overhealing. That said, unfortunately as of now our best throughput spells ( save for the very expensive HS) are Healing Rain ( even when it covers 2 people without UE. With UE you can safely use it even for one person ) Chain Heal and Riptide. Your fellow Ele that went resto with about 20ilvl's below you managed to have much more throughput exactly because while you were using HW and other single target spells he was busy stealing the show with layering HR/CH and Riptides. I can tell you that numbers are not always the best way to judge who was the better healer or who helped the most with your kill. You could have possibly won the kill by saving the tank or other members with your HS or GHW while your numbers plummeted and while your fellow shaman healer was merely enjoying the view with our AoE spells. If you want better numbers simply follow his route. My recommendation is to reforge to haste/crit/spirit while forgetting all Mastery. For glyphs better use Glyph of Riptide, Glyph of Totemic Recall ( use a keyboard binding if you must for faster recalls, remember also if you queue your recall even if your totem timer is expired you will still get full mana back making your HST free) and either Glyph of HST or Glyph of Telluric Currents. With the 5.3 change all shamans can cast LB on the move which could give you some mana back when you are not busy with anything else even on the move. Think about it. As for spell usage I think I already covered that earlier. In addition forget about using HW altogether. If you have enough regen, gem and enchant for Intellect, if not you can use hybrid gems for extra spirit. I still recommend using Int flasks and food however.

As a last note. Remember that numbers are not our holy bible when it comes to evaluating your skills. WoL is not supposed to be used as a comparison tool for who had the best throughput. If you think you are doing a good job keeping the raid alive even at the cost of your throughput while saving your targets on crucial moments for the kill all the while knowing that this does not hinder you from your duties towards your assignment then you should really not care of how you look on the meters. If everyone was already on 80% health but 2 targets were suffering then you should use your single target spells to save them instead of using Healing Rain or CH for numbers. First scenario you lag behind on meters but you get your kill, second scenario you don't get the kill and you wipe but you look better on the meters. Ask your RL which one they prefer.

I was hoping to get a little input on my resto shammy. My gear isnt specatcular, 507ish, and am currently just starting out in ToT. My ear is mix ToT LFR, Valor gear, and regular Toes and MSV gear. 2-piece ToT LFR

I am constantly out-healed by other classes (however, the people outhealing also have SIGNIFICANT overhealing done). But I am questioning what I am doing wrong.

I know I dont have Healing Stream on cool down, tend to save it for certain known moments healing will be needed. But other than that, I feel my HPS is way low.

I've been healing for two expansions now, but I'm a very long time player overall. I have gone from a typical mastery build to crit and use Int food and Flasks during raids. In ToT raids, due to the spread of the players during most fights, my heals are not as optimized as they could be. How can I do a better job at healing...is it gear, technique, spell usage, or something else?

Your ilevel is really low so you are almost healing with gear from the previous patch. What I did with similar ilvls was to to lower my spirit and go for crit instead. Crit will give you throughput and regen while spirit will only give you regen. You are healing normals for now so anything between 9k to 10k spirit will probably be enough. I cannot stress enough that you need much higher ilvl in order to get much higher numbers as your haste and crit will rise and you will have enough spirit to just cast all your heavy hitting spells. For now you can do the following :

As you noted you need to drop HST every CD. Glyph of recall helps if you want to make HST a free cast.

You don't need to buff every single HR with UE. HR is our strongest spell when it hits 2 raid members even without unleash so just cast HR on CD if you can have it under 2 raid members or more.

Glyphing RT will help. It's throughput will be less but the CH heal throughput rise will be worth it. Remember bow CH jumps between fully healed targets as well.

Never cast a GHW without TW buff. If you need to simply cast HS.

When you Ascend use HS and RT.Remember to have TW before you Ascend.

Always CH your earth shielded target with RT on.

Try to time your CD's as perfectly as possible. Communicate with your fellow healers. If for example you have a Disc spriest healing drop your HTT 2 seconds after the disc priest has activated their spirit shell.

From the first 4 fights in the ToT however the ones you have already been part of ( except for Jin'rokh ) are not very shaman friendly so don't worry too much about your numbers. Try to keep people alive and ask your raid leader for specifics on your healing assignment.

I was hoping to get a little input on my resto shammy. My gear isnt specatcular, 507ish, and am currently just starting out in ToT. My ear is mix ToT LFR, Valor gear, and regular Toes and MSV gear. 2-piece ToT LFR

If you read the reply I just posted above you will find the answers to your questions. Specifically on rotation advice and reforging. Some personal pointers for you however. Your mastery is very high, redirect some of that to crit. Your spirit is high too for your gear. Redirect some of that to crit as well. Spec out of Glyph of HW and replace it with glyph of totemic recall. You will get to essentially cast HST for free making your spirit needs smaller.On the second and third fight in ToT Shamans healers especially 10mans are very weak. Try to keep people alive with smart heals and do your best but don't expect to outheal any of your fellow healers it is just not possible with our toolkit. On the first boss however your numbers should be higher, your healing rain should hit for more but if you regem to int/crit and follow the directions above you should be able to get better throughput. HR/CH ( RT targets and preferably the one that has the earth shield on ).

I've been raiding as a resto shaman for nearly this entire expansion. Before that, I raided in Cata on a holy pally. I really love healing, I research my class and healing techniques, and I'm invested in becoming a better healer and a more valuable contribution to any raid team.

That said, I've sort of had it with my shaman. I have tried numerous variations of stat builds, different talent specs, changing glyphs, UI improvements. I stopped healing 10s, thinking 25s would be a better experience overall for my shaman. I'm not sure this has turned out to be the case. I feel sort of lost with the class right now.

Note that the other resto shaman did not heal for every attempt, yet still topped me. He has about six points on me in gear. I talked to him after raid, and tried his method of stat building, which was to severely reduce spirit and concentrate on int, haste, crit, and mastery.

The monk outhealed me, and I had about ten or twelve points on him in gear.

I've read and reread various guides, talked to a couple of different shaman, I'm constantly tweaking my toon. As it turns out, I might just be a bad shammy healer. I kept thinking it's the class, but that's a hard position to maintain when another resto shaman, similarly geared but with a different stat allocation, all but crushes me in HPS. Although I can stay out of the bad and am an overall decent player, looking at these logs gets me down and makes me hate shammy healing. At this point, I'm not sure if it's my rotation or my stats, but I tend to think it's my stats. It could also be familiarity with the fights. I'd be really appreciative if you could take a look at these logs and help me make any sense of this mess, before I abandon this toon for a monk!

That said, I've sort of had it with my shaman. I have tried numerous variations of stat builds, different talent specs, changing glyphs, UI improvements. I stopped healing 10s, thinking 25s would be a better experience overall for my shaman. I'm not sure this has turned out to be the case. I feel sort of lost with the class right now.

From the logs you provided it is very clear how he is outhealing you, however I cannot know how he practically does it. I will elaborate. You two seem to have fairly similar ilvl, I don't agree with his overly high mastery but that is a general comment. You see, in this expansion while some healing classes are doing much better than others a new phenomenon has come to pass. The idea behind it is that when it comes to healer balance, healer performance is very much tied to the composition of the raid and healing team. This will mean that depending on who you are healing with, your throughput will be better or worse. How do you counter for that? Unfortunately what is optimal will not always be what is better for you in your specific team. Although I don't agree with your fellow restos high mastery, it might be what is working for him and his play style in your team very specifically. So you can copy his stats but that doesn't mean you can reach him. It doesn't even mean he is better than you or that you are just not a good shaman healer. But it does mean that his stats are working for him and your team. If you check any random log where both of you are healing the same encounter you will see that you are using the same spells. As you already know for 25mans its spam HR/CH and then CDs. If we take a closer look on both of you we notice the following.

His overheals in every spell are less than yours. That means his spells hit before yours. I cannot know why exactly. It might be because he is quicker. He has better key bindings than you. He has less lag than you. He might just be quicker in deploying spells and assessing the situation.

His HR heal for more. Since you have very similar spec stats and ilvl, any of the reasons above could be the reason why. But something additional to the above. Something a lot of people don't know is that when our HR got all it's buffs it is by far our best spell to deploy on 2 targets or above even without UE. Actually at this point you should no longer Unleash before HR. HR should be on CD and unleashed every other. Be careful of how you use this however, the best way to do this is by carefully planning when to UE so that you have as close to 100% uptime of HR as possible. Also note that he has so many more hits in his HR than you. If you have the same haste then your HR uptime needs to be better and/or you need to plan how to hit as many ppl as possible. Summary. If you have exactly the same haste and stats and you put down HR at the same location you need to be better at getting HR uptime at 100%.

His CH are healing for more. Again all of the above but with specifics to CH. You absolutely need to CH Riptide targets and of course the lesser life the have the better. He has many more hits of CH than you. That's because he is spamming it more than you.For everytime you think you should HS instead he is using CH. I don't like that we have to do this as restos but this is what we do in this expansion. So CH as much as possible, choose Riptide targets, try to choose targets that you know are healed for more ( ex some classes have 20% healing bonus ) and of course remember when you hit an earth shielded target your first hit will be 20% buffed. On that note, his earth shield uptime is no match to yours. You know why? Because he doesn't care if he uses it, he only cares about HR/CH spam. This is a huge problem with us restos that our best thorughput does not collide with how it is fun for us to play. As a final note, his Riptides are healing for more and he is deplying more. Since neither of you have them glyphed then he is just better at using them on CD. Get a huge aura that will notify you when your Rip is up and just spam it.

Another note is that he is using his CD's better than you.HTT and Ascendance overheal for less and they have better thoughput than yours. There are several reasons for this. His CD's are called in better time than yours, meaning you RL is calling for his when there is more damage so they heal for more when the damage is spikey. He might be using them in conjunction with potions/other CD's. Overall our class throughput in MoP is tied to our CD's.So the more our CD's heal and the more optimally they are used it will result in better numbers for us. So my advice will be, have better timing if you can, assess the fight beforehand and use your best Cd's with potions for damage you know is incoming. I cannot stress the following enough. Every single second counts. If you miss seconds in drinking potions, lagging, moving in game or irl or any other reason that would cause seconds of delay, your CD's will heal for less and your fellow shaman that might be in better control of all of the above will surpass you.

His HST is healing for more and has less overheals. You can't help the overheals in your HST. Just have better uptime as close to 100% as possible ( use another huge aura for that as well ).

Also, I know he is using Glyph of Healing wave but don't bother with it. Just remove it and use glyph of Totemic recall and try to recall your HST few times. Forget about using HW completely, just CH even single targets and use that extra mana the glyph will provide for better throughput.

I think I covered your logs difference my main point is though that although resto shamans are on the bottom of the barrel now one thing that is comon for every class ( Heals/dps/tanks ) is timing. The better you manage every single spell, the less lag you have, the better key bindings you have, every but helps. If you want to main switch go ahead, I can't promise you that resto shamans will get any better, a lot of people I know have already switched after being tired of how our class is healing. It is not just our numbers, but the way we heal is just not as fun anymore.

Hi looking for some advice on how to better optimize my build as well as my healing output as I feel my numbers are lacking for my current gear lvl. Although recently I have obtained 2 upgrades the legendary cloak and a war forged mace. I have messed with my build a few times and i think im getting closer. I am more then happy with my current mana regen. I am trying to have my build where i can achieve the highest haste cap possible with as much crit as i can get and stay between 50-55% mastery as I have not found mastery as usefull as crit on my 25 man team. Currently with AS and the raid buff I am at the 3764 haste cap. So here is what I am looking for advice on should I at my current gear level be striving for a higher haste cap. Also I feel my hps is too low for my current gear score and would like to improve and some ways to better optimize my gear to better my performance if possible. I am relatively new to the game in terms of many players only been playing since September of this year. Any advice/feedback is greatly appreciated and I thank you in advance for your time.

I believe some of my problem is heavy moment fights and perhaps my rotation. But to be honest im not really sure. I have read and researched alot on this forum and others dedicated to the game and have found many differing ideas some have worked for me others not so much I am relatively new to the game have only been playing since September. I do try to change my talents and my glyphs based on fight mechanics which has helped me some as well as trying to maximize my use of SG in heavy movement based fights. MY rotation i use my healing stream and healing tide on cool downs chain heal riptide as much as possible and I do tend to use HS more then GHW. Also I feel I might be playing to low a haste cap for my current item lvl but I am not sure about that as in my research i have found differing opinions similar to the crit vs mastery debate.

Hello, so I am here helping my resto shammy friend. She is 560ish but what im wondering about is what haste soft caps are worth hitting, and preferably why. If I am wasting your time with this question please say so don't just leave it. Thank you for any information you provide in advance. This may not matter but it is a 10 man raid team.